Friedrich Engels (5/2010)

Friedrich Engels (5/2010)

Friedrich Engels was one of the most apposite minds and politicians with the greatest mental acuity of the 19^th century. He used Karl Marx as the principal for the reunification of Germany and carefully manipulated him before cutting him loose. He was loyal to his oath to the Prussian army which gave him training in artillery techniques before he was 20 years of age. He married twice and left progeny in his second wife's name after his first wife died. His wives were sisters of Irish extraction; the man he manipulated, Karl Marx, left no male progeny.

Let us turn to one of the key facts of Engels’s consciousness and conscience- he was not an anti Semite. The writings of this soldier and officer are often latched onto those of his drug- addled associate, Karl Marx. The brilliant turn of phrase in the combination is that of Engels who clearly never lost the thread of his thought. Engels was always content to play second fiddle but his excursive writings on geography topography, culture, war and history are still extant.

In 1845 Marx wrote virulently anti Semitic prose in his German Ideology which he imagined he left behind him “to the gnawing criticism of the mice” when he was thrown out of Brussels and went to France to the literary forcing ground of the First Arrondissement. In 1844 he construed that his meeting in Belgium with the young Engels had been the work of chance.

In 1853 Engels sent Marx money to spend at his discretion. Marx’s only son, Edgar, was born perfectly healthy but ,in the absence of correspondence ,Marx consulted a doctor and his son died an infinitely cruel and painful death six weeks later.

All the colourful invectives for which Marx took credit were clearly the work of Engels who also insisted that his signature be appended. Engels behaved fairly towards Marx’s relatives after his death but two of Marx’s daughters succumbed to suicide.

Engels personally endowed Marx richly for his literary efforts  from his fortune.

At the other end of Marx’s skipping rope in Germany were Hinckeldey, the forger of the minutes of the Communist League, and one police lieutenant called Stieber who answered to Count Von Westphalen from 1848 to 1852 before being sacked. He reappeared in 1870 to 1871 in the police during the final stages of the German reunification process and lost his police pension at the injunction of Bismarck.

After German reunification, Engels gave little regard to Marx and travelled widely. He edited Marx’s rambling speculations after Marx’s death and showed his contempt for Marx in the second volume of Capital where he refers to Marx’s perplexity with a simple way of telling the date by saying we must trust to Marx’s “genius”.

Salud!